


come rain or (sun)shine

by Lulzy (likelolwhat)



Series: looking for heaven (found the devil in me) [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: (of course there's angst it's Carver), Angst, Carver Hawke POV, Family Drama, Family Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I mean I love him the big lug but sheesh, post-Destruction of Lothering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 03:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13309770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likelolwhat/pseuds/Lulzy
Summary: "The first First Day without snow in his entire life is just the latest in a long line of disappointments, the worst of which has always been Carver himself."or; the Bethany-shaped hole in the Hawke family yawns wide.





	come rain or (sun)shine

**Author's Note:**

> oooookay this was supposed to be for #HawkeHolidays over at [the Carver Defense Squad](http://carver-defense-squad.tumblr.com/) but it got really messy and feelsy ~~and depressing~~ and not really festive at all. _coughs_

Kirkwall is dirty, and crowded, and smells like sewer and brine, but if Carver could pick one thing at the moment to hate the most about this disgusting city with its ghosts and chains and _people_ , it would be the climate. Garrett can roll his eyes all he wants, but when, mid-Haring, the weather resembles a Ferelden summer, only so much wetter, and storms roll in off the Sea every other day, he realizes that it isn’t going to snow at all.

It’s a ridiculous thing to complain about, he knows. Garrett doesn’t _have_ to tell him. The first First Day without snow in his entire life is just the latest in a long line of disappointments, the worst of which has always been Carver himself. Garrett doesn’t have to tell him because he knows already.

He misses Bethany. Maybe that’s it; the first new year without his sister, her constant presence. No one talks about it, not after Mother said all that needed to be said over her broken body. It was directed at Garrett, but Carver felt it deeper, little razors slicing up his heart. Couldn’t keep her safe. Won’t ever spend a cold night in Ferelden talking to Bethany about everything and nothing again, until Mother brings them tea with a fond smile and shake of the head.

The tea here is little more than boiled bark, all they can afford while saving for the Deep Roads. Sugar is expensive and the only honey he’s seen has been in daydreams. Still, Mother tries her best, and he can occasionally scrounge spices from smugglers’ dens on the Wounded Coast when Meeran’s work send him that way. When Garrett leaves without him, which is all the damn time, he somehow manages to bring home whole jars of cinnamon, lavender and chamomile. And Carver tries very hard not to seethe. Garrett isn’t _trying_ to show him up; despite his brother’s infuriating competence he’s not stuck up about it. Which is worse, somehow.

Across the table, Garrett is distracted by the pretty waitress, who is clearly smitten with him (or flirting for tips, but knowing Garrett it’s more likely she’s helplessly in love). His brother is laying on the charm right back, and though the Hanged Man is crowded for the First Day festivities Carver can still hear them. It’s making him nauseous.

Carver snatches up his cup and downs the… whatever, not even flinching as it makes a trail of fire down his throat, and slams it back down on the table. It crumples as if it were paper, and Carver pauses in the middle of leaping to his feet to blink at it. _Shit_.

Garrett looks up then, concerned (his default expression when looking at Carver, it seems), but before he can ask the question Carver dreads most of all, the warrior shoves his hands in his pockets and mumbles, “I have to go.”

“Carver!” his brother calls at his back — leaving, he is leaving, not _running away_ — but someone, probably the waitress, keeps him from following and Carver is fine with that.

It’s raining outside, _again_ , and Carver charges right into it before he can stop, not that he would have anyway, not after he left in such a state. Which makes a twinge of guilt — more guilt, another addition to the mountain of it — flutter in his chest. Maker, he is so dramatic.

The door to the Hanged Man creaks behind him, probably someone getting some fresh air — and the Hanged Man, especially, smells of old piss and bile, and as crowded as it is also _new_ piss and bile — so he hunches his shoulders and stomps through the rain toward his uncle’s hovel.

No one else is out in the streets of Lowtown, not even the most desperate thief or drunken celebrant, but light spills from the windows of every dwelling and makes the dark and the rain somewhat easier to navigate. He is soaked down to his smalls by the time he gets home, and shivering violently. More than ever he wishes for proper winter celebrations, like building snowmen with his sister in the backwoods, or when his father would build a bonfire and they’d all huddle around it, or catching snowflakes on his tongue. Or being able to get roaring drunk without his brother being himself.

As it is, he’s not even close to tipsy, and the fire in his throat from the… whatever is long gone by the time he pushes open the door to Gamlen’s house.

And finds his mother, grayer than ever, sitting at the table with a cup of tea in her hands. She is humming something between her hiccups, tears drying on her cheeks, and doesn’t stop even as he pauses in the doorway, waffling between in and out, or when he carefully steps in and shuts the door behind him. His clothes are dripping all over the already-warped floors, and his guilt is piling up again, but he can’t bring himself to leave.

Not when she is already so alone.

Still hiccuping, she reaches the end of her lullaby. For that is what it is, he remembers, a memory surfacing from the depths of his being of when he and Bethany were small and their mother would, despite Garrett’s protests that he was too old for it, tuck them all into bed and sing over them as they drifted into the Fade.

“Carver,” she whispers, not looking up. Her head is bowed, hands around the forgotten teacup shaking ever so slightly.

“Mother…” He wants to ask her if she’s okay, but his voice dies in his throat when she turns her head at last. She looks so lost, and when she sees him she lets out a choked sob and buries her face in one arm, back shaking as her weeping fills his ears. He’s across the room before his brain catches up, kneeling on the stained hardwood at her feet and gently taking her other hand in both of his. She’s so fragile in his warrior hands, so like that one time he found a baby bird in the woods behind the house and its tiny bones shattered when he picked it up. He is older now, though perhaps not much wiser.

His mother’s voice is muffled against her sleeve, but no less anguished. “We just left her there, Carver.”

He thinks of her body, left for animals and darkspawn, and swallows. The only things left of Bethany now are memories, and the staff that Garrett carried across the Waking Sea, side by side with his own. He’d offered it to Carver after they got into the city, but Carver had still been so angry, and now he doesn’t know where Garrett put it. He wants to ask, just to know.

Instead he rests his forehead against his mother’s knee and blinks slowly, breathes slowly, willing the tears back.

“My poor little girl…” She must have already cried herself out, her breaths evening within minutes. He doesn’t move, but he feels her shift, setting the teacup down. “I miss her,” she says, voice ragged and quiet, and strokes his hair. It’s soggy and dripping down his back, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“Me too.”

“This will be the first holiday in a long time without her. The first holiday in a new home, and it’s without my Bethany. I wonder if she would have liked it here.”

“Probably not,” Carver says gently, “but she’d have never let it show. And Kirkwall would’ve been a better place with her in it.”

She sighs. “Yes. Yes… Oh, Carver. Does it ever stop hurting?”

 _No. It never does, it never will_. He thinks of that unusually warm winter when his twin held the melting snowmen together with frost magic, and the razors carve another piece of his heart. Bethany is gone, back in Ferelden with their old lives, and while he doesn’t want to be “Garrett Hawke’s baby brother” anymore, that doesn’t mean he knows what else to be.

A son. He can be his mother’s son.

The rain pounds outside, and his knees gradually go numb, but he holds his mother’s hand and lets (himself let) her run shaking fingers through his wet hair. It’s a long time before her hand stills and she succumbs to exhaustion, barely stirring when he lifts her up ( _broken bird, life seeping through your hands_ ) and tucks her into her narrow bed in the room she shares with Uncle Gamlen, and longer still before he can finally dry off. Lying down in the other room is more a formality than anything; he won’t sleep. He can’t.

So he listens to the wind rise and fall, howling through the streets and whipping at the tree in the Alienage, and the rumbling of distant thunder over Sundermount. He’s used to falling asleep to Sophia snoring from her favorite place under the writing desk, but the mabari is with Garrett, and Garrett is… somewhere.

* * *

 

Garrett is… standing over him in the dark, eyes sad, one hand hovering in the air as if he hand been about to touch Carver but thought better of it.

“Mmph?”

“Sorry,” Garrett says quietly. “It’s just I— I’m sorry.”

Carver blinks slowly, still trying to figure out how he managed to fall asleep despite everything.

Sophia trots into the room and shoves her cold nose into Carver’s hand. Carver doesn’t move, because now that the sleep is blinked away he notices Garrett is looking at him with an expression he can’t figure out. It’s not concern, not really, or not the same kind of concern it was back in that squalid tavern.

“Tell me what to do,” Garrett whispers, “because I’ve run out of ideas.”

_Oh._

Before he can untangle his tongue, to ask _what the hell does that mean_ , Garrett shakes his head sharply. “Never mind. I’m just tired.” He turns away and steps toward his bed in the other corner, unhooking his staff and rolling his shoulders.

“No. Wait just a minute.” Carver surprises himself with his own vehemence. He pushes Sophia away — the mabari wisely makes herself scarce — and sits up. “I just spent hours comforting _our mother_ because this is the first new year without Bethany and you have the nerve to just— barge in here and act like _you’re_ lost?”

Garrett opens his mouth, turning back halfway, and promptly shuts it again when he sees Carver’s face.

Carver doesn’t know what he sees there, but he squares his jaw and barrels on. Barreling on is what he’s best at. “What the ever-loving _hell_ , Garrett!” His voice pitches funny, and he hurriedly takes a calming breath. If he wakes Mother, he’ll never forgive himself.

Both of them freeze when the sound of her shifting carries through the thin walls. They hear nothing more, though, and Carver turns back just in time to catch Garrett’s stricken expression before he sits heavily his bed and bends to unlace his boots. His hands are shaking. “I’m sorry,” he says raggedly. “I didn’t think— I didn’t think. Maker. I shouldn’t have stayed so long.”

Carver is tempted to say something scathing about that, but the very fact that Garrett is visibly upset holds his tongue. “Right,” he says instead, running a hand through his hair.

“I’ll talk to her in the morning.”

Carver throws his hands up in frustration. The fight is over before it really began, and his blood is boiling with nowhere to expend that energy. He could go out and pick a fight with some back-alley thug (the storm has abated, at least), but… no. He won’t do that to Mother. “Right.”

Garrett finishes undressing and goes to bed without another word, and soon after Carver lays back down Sophia is there again, nudging under his arm and then crawling onto the mattress with him. She presses herself against his side and lays her square head on his collarbone, gazing at him with her huge mournful eyes. Carver huffs in half-annoyance, half-affection and gives her an ear-scratch.

She is not his twin, and he can’t talk to her while Garrett is in the room (and he would feel silly about it anyway, however Fereldan he may be) but she does her best.

Their best is all anyone can give, and then he’s reminded of Bethany again, Bethany who always put her all into everything. Bethany who protected him as much as he protected her. He sighs, staring blindly up at the ceiling, as Garrett’s snores join Sophia’s. Bethany wouldn’t have liked Kirkwall, but she would have brought her sunshine to every corner of this blasted hellhole by the time she was done.

Their best is all anyone can give. He is not Bethany, and he will forge his own path away from his brother’s shadow, but he will do his best, too.


End file.
